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Vincent and the Doctor
I . . . don't really know what to say about this one. It was a bizarre episode. Because the Doctor was just completely incompetent. I mean, so was Amy, but sadly, I am by now used to the companion being nothing more than a screaming damsel--Amy started out not completely useless, but really, the last few episodes she hasn't been a very strong character. But the Doctor usually manages to pull together some basic plan to at least try and get himself and Amy out of trouble. This episode he just kind of went "I shall point my screwdriver at the monster and hope for the best!". Bad plan, Doctor. A lot worse than usual.
And since when is trying to communicate with the monster a last resort? I really try to avoid comparing Ten and Eleven, usually, but I will do it now--because Ten always tried talking to his adversaries first. And not just Ten did. Nine did, too; the Doctor does. Which is why I felt it to be really OOC when it took Eleven most of the episode to come up with the idea of trying to talk to the monster.
And then they killed it. Great going there. I don't know. I don't mind seeing the Doctor failing to live up to his standards, but when he does, it should be done in an IC way. The Doctor--and the companions, usually--are too clever to make the sort of mistakes they made in this episode. Which is why it didn't feel like he made an honest mistake. It simply felt like he was being an incompetent idiot.
I liked how they treated the depression issue. Depression is depression, and a trip to the future won't magically fix it. I liked Eleven bowtie-flirting with Nighy's character. Generally--BILL NIGHY. God, I love Bill Nighy. Shame that he ended up in what I thought was overall a very weak DW episode.
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I had trouble connecting with this one, it was an okay episode but I've seen a lot of "BEST EPISODE EVER!" and "I WAS CRYING SO HARD!" opinions which have me a bit baffled o.O
And I kept waiting for the Doctor to come up with a plan, and then the monster was randomly stabbed, but the episode wasn't over? So confusing and random.
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Yeah, I had that problem, too. The Doctor always has a plan. It might be a completely insane plan, but he always has something. That's kind of his thing. Him just running around being completely useless was really disorienting.
And yeah, the pacing of the episode wasn't great. I read someone saying somewhere that it would have been better without the monster, and I agree, it probably would have been. The whole thing with the monster just kind of felt very random and forced.
they tend to differ from what I see around the fandom
Heh, well, I've kind of been keeping away from the fandom since the new season started. I really liked RTD's run and don't want to listen to a bunch of people putting the previous seasons and production team down to make themselves feel better about the new season. Equally, I don't want to listen to a bunch of Moffat-haters slagging off everything about the new show and rejecting it simply because it's new. So I'm kind of keeping it to my journal and my f-list at the moment, which is why I'm usually unaware of the general fandom opinion when I'm writing up these reviews.
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And I can understand staying away from fandom, I don't always interact but I like to read a lot of opinions. There is a problem in the fandom of things tend to be polarizing, like you said- they either have to prop up the new season and bash the RTD era, or they have to hate on every single thing because they miss the RTD days. It makes it difficult to have an honest critique/review of an episode because you automatically get labeled as a "hater".
I really don't mind people having different opinions from my own or putting out a perspective I didn't see, that's why I skim reviews/comments. But there are some people who just can't take opinions that differ from their own and that's where it gets annoying.
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I enjoyed the episode because I just went with my squee over BILL BIGHY and ART and VAN GOGH and that was enough to keep me happy.
The space turkey was a bit silly. How cool would it have been to discover it's not actually a monster, just van Gogh being mad. Or, they could have not done the alien at all and just focused on how van Gogh saw the world differently. Like in that scene in the grass at the end. More of that would have been so cool.
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I don't know, I never felt it this strongly before. There have been episodes where the Doctor was being pretty stupid, but it was always done in a way that felt as if he actually thought he knew what he was doing. In this episode, I just couldn't see that in what was going on. It didn't feel as if the Doctor had any clue what he was doing, which is just completely atypical for the character.
How cool would it have been to discover it's not actually a monster, just van Gogh being mad.
I actually thought that was going to be it--the monster being some sort of manifestation of van Gogh's madness. They could have done it so his suicide was actually what killed the monster and protected the people from the village. That would have been awesome, and it would have been a lot less sappy than what they did end up doing.
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That would have been a much better episode. You should start writing for DW. *nods*